


The Wrong Side of the Sheets

by Rowan_of_Transylvania



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Brother Feels, Bullying, Gen, Illegitimacy, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 22:02:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3184790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rowan_of_Transylvania/pseuds/Rowan_of_Transylvania
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dori was twenty-nine when he found out his mother was a bastard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wrong Side of the Sheets

**Author's Note:**

> Short fill that I wrote a while back for [this prompt](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/6263.html?thread=14681463#t14681463).  
> on the kinkmeme. I'm not sure if I should continue this or leave it as a ficlet. Thoughts?

Dori’s mother had him young. He was six when the dragon came, when he was carried away from the mountain by his mother, crying for a father he would never see again. He was sixteen when they settled in Erid Luin, when the teasing began. He wasn’t the only dwarrow to have lost a parent in the Desolation, but the Erid Luin dwarrows hadn’t been there, and it was they who started it.  
  
Dori half expected his fellow Ereboreans to stand up for him when the Blue Mountains children first laughed at him for having no father. They didn’t. They stood up for each other well enough, but Dori was poor, he was lower class, he had no honorable standing. Eventually his own fellows turned against him, their anger and grief over Erebor’s loss driving them to find a scapegoat. Dori didn’t have a father, and his mother didn’t have a father either; it was alright to laugh at him.  
  
Dori was seventeen when he finally broke down to his mother, explaining through the tears how the other children mocked him, asked him where his father was. His mother picked him up, dried his eyes and told him it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because they were of the line of Durin, and that was honor enough for anyone. Dori held that close to his heart whenever the other children started up. It was his secret to hold, to keep his heart warm: he was of the line of Durin.  
  
Dori was twenty-five when his brother was born. He knew who the father was, a friend of his mother’s (or at least, that’s what she had told him) named Gadron. Tradition demanded that Dori’s new brother be named after his mother, being born out of wedlock, with only a slight hint of his father’s name. But Nala refused to allow her son to be seen as an embarrassment, and named him Nori as a son of Doli.  
  
Dori was twenty-nine when Nori first came to him, sniffling that some of the older boys had called him an honorless cur. Suddenly Dori’s deep-held secret, his warmth, came bursting out in defense of his brother. “We’re of the line of Durin!” he shouted, for Nori and the other boys to hear, “That’s honor enough for anyone, us or you!”  
  
There was a stunned silence, and then the boys burst into derisive laughter once more. “The line of Durin’s got one hell of a crook in it, then.” called out one.  
  
“Thror must have been drunk that night,” yelled another, “‘Cause that’s sure not on the right side of the sheets!”  
  
“That’s if there were sheets at all!” a third replied, and they all fell to laughing again.  
  
Dori was twenty-nine when he found out his mother was a bastard. Nori curled into him again, hiding his tears in Dori’s shirt, and Dori carried him away from the playing yard to their home. It was later that night, with Nori half asleep beside him in their shared bed, that Dori whispered to him fiercely, “We are part of the line of Durin. We’re part of the line of Durin on the wrong side of the sheets.”


End file.
